She has been
called, among other things, a "poetess" of our film industry.
Professor Carlo Fonseka lays out a more nuanced description: the "Mother
of the Father" of Sinhala cinema. Both go some way in grasping her
pithily, but there's something that seems to elude commentators here, something
she herself has held back from them. I am of course not suggesting that words
can't do justice to her, but then again, in an industry where words are a
distraction and the image is held as sacred, filmmakers remain indefinable even
through the eyes of the biographer. This week's star is no exception to this, I
believe, and thankfully so.
With more than five
films to her name, Sumitra Peries deserves as much introduction as all those
other directors here who forged a personal idiom in their work. She has her
views on film craft, and after much discussion I doubt I've even come close to
finding out what they may be. So rooted in their settings, and full of empathy
for their women, those films of hers (made at a time when men were said to make
the moves in the industry) stand out, though not always in a way which attracts
unqualified praise. Inevitably: in this country, after all, praise has never
been free of caveat.
Sumitra's biography
has been written extensively many times before, so delving into it lengthily
will serve little purpose. After all, snippets from her childhood and teenage
years – her upbringing under the shadow of a powerful political
family (the Gunawardena clan hailing from Boralugoda); her education at Visakha
Vidyalaya (where she was branded a “leftist”); her voyage along the Mediterranean
in search of her pipe-smoking brother; and her schooling at the London School
of Film Technique towards the end of the 1950s (the only woman enrolled there
at the time) – would fit a Hollywood scrapbook!
And in a way, this
may be what has infused that sense of daring and courage we see in many of her
films. To start things off I put to her that most of the criticism levelled at
her films is based on how THEY think she views the women in them. Profiling
Sri Lankan Cinema captures this best: "Although she deals with
the loves and lives of women, she is unable, in many of her films, to break out
of the patriarchally sanctioned framework that has been privileged and has held
sway in Sri Lankan cinema." I would disagree: the fact that a patriarchal
society overwhelms the wives, mothers, and daughters resident in her films
doesn't take away our sympathy for them, something most critiques of her seem
to miss.
Sumitra is cautious
in her reply. "The women in my films almost always lose, yes. But in my
world they are the sufferers. I can't manipulate reality, and the reality in my
day was pretty much presented in my first few films." What this implies,
of course, is that her later films were different, and I would agree: Nadeeka
Gunasekera from Yahalu Yeheli is not Vasanthi Chathurani
from Ganga Addara or Gehenu Lamayi. In the latter
two films, all the woman can do is to either bemoan her cruel fate or kill
herself in the face of oppression. In the former film, that woman has changed:
she is independent enough to defy both family and father, features of the same
"patriarchally sanctioned framework" that critics find fault with.
To consider this as
her signature is both correct and wrong. Women reside in Sumitra's world, true,
and it is through the deeply felt poignancy of their plights that our empathy
is evoked. But reading her work this way misses out several other aspects to
her work. I think she herself sums this up best: "I'm not 'committed' in
an excessively political way. But I don't think you have to be political to
evoke sympathy for the downtrodden."
I think the central
trope that binds her films is based on gender differentials. At times however,
this is superseded by another trope: class differentials. How even or uneven
her films are can be judged by how well these two tropes coincide. In Gehenu
Lamayi, for instance, the central drama of the conflict – between the
landed bourgeoisie represented by Ajith Jinadasa and the peasantry represented
by Vasanthi Chathurani – is rarely if at all subsumed by the tension generated
by the romance between the two. In Ganga Addara, on the other hand,
the central conflict, which is represented by the class-gap between Chathurani
and Sanath Gunathilake, is effectively made an instrument of melodrama.
Many of her films
were vindicated at the box-office, particularly Ganga Addara. In an
industry which has almost always sustained an inverse relationship between
critical and commercial appeal, this too is notable, though perhaps not
surprising: Sumitra has frequently gone for adaptations of authors who have
struck a chord with youth, particularly Karunasena Jayalath.
I noted at the
beginning that the labels like "poetess" do scant justice to Sumitra.
I still stand by this. They imply that she's "different", that her films
are "feminine" in some outlandish way, and that her empathy for women
comes out from personal experience. No, I don't deny that a film like Gehenu
Lamayi has an experience. But demarcating her as a poetess due to this
betrays the same "framework" which the authors of Profiling
Sri Lankan Cinema find to be affirmed in her work. How? By implicitly
considering her films as "quirks" in our cinema, "freakish"
in their conception and by their views on gender relations.
I've come across
comments like this as well. Suffice it to say that they are crass and
ridiculous, if at all for the reason that they tend to devalue her stature as a
courageous filmmaker on her own right. I point this out to Sumitra by telling
her that notwithstanding the honesty and courage invested in her work, many of
her critics are bothered only by the fact that despite the director being a
woman, the women in her films are never vindicated. I add that had she heeded
their call and altered the way her characters are portrayed, they would lose
half the authenticity and spontaneity that distinguish them to date. She
smiles. By way of agreement, I'd like to think.
In this sense I
think the observation made at the end of the essay on her in Profiling
Sri Lankan Cinema is misplaced: "Clearly Sumitra has not gone far
enough as a director with feminist interests. But then no one else has
either." To judge films made about women with the criterion one uses for
feminist pamphlets is, in my mind, a little erroneous, something driven home by
the fact that NONE of the directors (in her day) venerated for their empathy
towards women can be classed under the "feminist" tag. Why judge her
films on this basis ALONE, then?
These reflections
provoke debate and discussion. That's not for an article or two. That's for an
entire book. No one to my mind, however, has approached Sumitra Peries' life
and work this way, a pity considering how enriched her works are if they’re
read in more ways than one.
This is certainly
exemplified in her masterpiece, Sagara Jalaya. I tell Sumitra that
the ending of that film, with the fiercely independent Heen Kelle (Swarna
Mallawarachchi, in her best role) left at a crossroads and her son writing a
letter to his uncle asking for a job, is the most powerfully intense in the
history of our cinema. The anguish reflected in that sequence, in my opinion,
is hard to replicate even today. That goes a long way in evoking sympathy for
woman and child in light of contemporary reality, certainly a better way than
that demanded by those who claim that her work is unsatisfactory on the basis
of feminist ambitions.
Sumitra Peries, in
short, has (like her husband, I should add) been subject to relentless and not
always justifiable criticism, much of which has centred on a crass and
downright incorrect reading of her work. Let me put it this way: I've come to
appreciate works of art for how they relate to context and reality. The best
praise the artist can receive (we're told) is that his or her work is perennial
DESPITE this. But I'm not happy with such a categorisation of art. I'd like to
alter this, hence: the best praise an artist SHOULD get is that his or her work
resists the strands of time, and is always subject to transformation in the
hands of the critic, from one period of time to the other.
Judging by this,
Sumitra has (happily) had her share of praise. As I pointed out before however,
that praise has not been unqualified, inevitable in a small industry (and
country) such as ours. This isn't to say that she's gone unnoticed. It's just
that, when it comes to analysing her conception of the cinema, people have let
their biases for or against it colour their verdicts on how well she has stuck
by it. We need to reevaluate her radically, I believe. And fast.
Written for: Daily News TOWN AND COUNTRY, January 6 2016
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